GIFs have become a ubiquitous part of our society. Whether we’re commenting on news stories or texting with friends, GIFs are the fastest way to communicate what words can’t. GIFs have also changed the way we view porn.

Most modern porn sites like Pornhub use GIFs to tease out what’s featured in the full-length video, while entire communities of porn viewers have emerged around the sharing of porn GIFs, capturing those few fleeting seconds that make them curl their toes. But our porn GIFs legal, and where are the best places to find them? Here’s everything you need to know.

Are porn GIFs legal?

One of the issues people often forget with GIFs is that they’re someone else’s intellectual property. When we’re talking about a four-second clip of an Adventure Time episode that’s one thing, but often porn GIFs quickly break down a whole scene. It’s like watching an episode of a show with the sound off, only everyone is naked, and you see the money shot.

The legality of GIFs is still something of a gray area. Many content providers have embraced GIFs as a way of spreading their work, while others entities have cracked down on the unauthorized reproduction of copyrighted images. The NFL even put rules in place to determine when and how its teams can share GIFs.

A 2013 case has been cited as a possible precedent for the legality of GIFs. In the case, a seven-second clip from The Ed Sullivan Show was used during a production of the Broadway show Jersey Boys. SOFA Entertainment, the owner of the rights to The Ed Sullivan Show, sued the production company, Dodger Productions. In its ruling, the Ninth Circuit court declared that the clip qualified under the Copyright Act as fair use.

The basic argument is that a seven-second clip doesn’t give you the same experience as watching a full episode of The Ed Sullivan Show. Interestingly, with porn GIFs, that logic may not hold, especially if the GIF in question is designed to give you the same experience as watching a whole scene.

Regardless, when you’re viewing porn GIFs, it’s important to consider (and potentially compensate) the independent artists and production companies whose work you may be cheapening.

Porn GIFs: The best sites to find them

Hunting down porn GIFs is easy if you know where to look. For many people, Tumblr is the go-to source for hot GIFy action. It’s a cornucopia of sexy options, but Tumblr porn accounts often stop updating, leaving you with a favorite site that abandons you right when you need it most. Below you’ll find a handful of the best places on the internet for porn GIFs. No matter what you’re looking for, this list will help get you started.

If Giphy is the internet’s home for traditional GIF fun and games, Gif Porn Tube is the hidden folder on its computer. Featuring thousands of GIFs of hardcore pornography across a wide range of genres, GIf Porn Tube has a little something for everyone. No one has more variety, but that also sometimes means you’ll see things on the home page that aren’t to your particular tastes. The site offers the ability to search by dozens of categories, but like most free porn sites, you’ll encounter countless pop-up ads.

With 499 pages Tumblr porn GIFs, Gifs For is the perfect stop for people who don’t want to search when they look for content. This traditionally styled GIF blog swings between different genres of porn, one moment focusing on solo scenes and the next soapy people rubbing their genitals together. There’s little rhyme or reason to the picks, but the random nature makes it a fun trip to browse through.

Sex.com is one of the most valuable websites in the world, and not just because of its name recognition. It’d be easy for it to just host adult videos, but instead, it’s curated a diverse site with content ranging from erotica and videos to GIFs. Its GIFs section is regularly updated and features rows and rows of GIFs, making it the perfect spot to pop in to quickly scan a bunch of options.

Looking for the smoothest-looking porn GIFs online? Part of the sprawling NSFW Reddit world, r/60fpsporn features GIFs at 60 frames per second that offer a more life-like looking clip than the standard 24 frames per second clip. These are high-quality clips have to meet specific standards or else face deletion from a steadfast crew of moderators.

Sick of slickly produced porn? r/gifsgonewild is yet another part of the larger Reddit Gone Wild ecosystem, and it features only amateur content from its online community, introducing you to the bedrooms of strangers across the world. With bodies that look like people you know instead of perfect Barbie’s, r/gifsgonewild highlights the natural beauty of real people having sex.

Unlike r/GayGifs, r/Lesbian_gifs doesn’t draw from lesbian porn that was designed for actual lesbians. Instead, it mostly pulls from mainstream hetero-sexually minded lesbian scenes, with a few rare exceptions. What it lacks in authenticity it makes up for in enthusiasm, with an active community of uploaders adding new content daily.

You’ll notice a theme of heteronormativity on this list. Most of the regularly updated porn GIF sites focus on heterosexuals, but this NSFW Reddit community with27,075 active members is a big exception. With a blend of solo, group, and traditional one-on-one scenes, r/GayGifs is a one-stop shop for men who like men. The GIFs are sourced from professional shoots and amateur clips, serving up plenty of variety.

NSFW_GIF isn’t just about traditional porn, in fact, it encompasses a broader range of erotic content. Mixing teasing clips with traditional hardcore content, r/NSFW_GIF is a space where you’re just as likely to find a scene from an old softcore porn as you are a new pornstar.

Nothing illustrates the oddball separations between Reddit communities like these two subreddits. The only thing that separates them is an underscore, but each features different subsets of users curating their content. Each community has developed an eclectic mix of scenes, gonzo weirdness, and erotic content.

Tumblr GIFs definitely aren’t in short supply, but it’s tough to find what you want using search alone. If you do your research, though, you’ll find some of the best and most well-curated GIF porn on Tumblr. The Gifer features (mostly heterosexual) GIFs taken from snippets of full-length videos. It’s updated pretty frequently, so new content is always on the horizon.

This Tumblr blog is probably the best in terms of GIF variety, diversity, and frequency. No matter what you’re into, odds are you’ll find it if you scroll through various GIF sets featuring couples, boobs, solo fun time, vibrators—you name it. The blog is submission based and occasionally posts originally sourced content, but also reblogs so much you might have to scroll daily to keep up. There’s also a separate tab for video reblogs and submissions if you grow weary of GIF action at the end of the day.

In keeping with the great Tumblr tradition of keeping commentary to a minimum in favor of flooding a feed with images, So Many Porn Gifs lives up to its name in every way. How many porn gifs? So many. Taking a shotgun approach to sharing porn gifs, So Many Porn Gifs pours out a wall of moving images on a grid of grinding bodies. This isn’t a place to go for nuance, but if you like scanning hundreds of images quickly to find the right one few do it better.

John-Michael Bond is a tech reporter and culture writer for Daily Dot. A longtime cord-cutter and early adapter, he's an expert on streaming services (Hulu with Live TV), devices (Roku, Amazon Fire), and anime. A former staff writer for TUAW, he's knowledgeable on all things Apple and Android. You can also find him talking about religion each week on the Who’s Your God podcast and performing standup comedy in Los Angeles.